


Taller Tales than Most

by anamuan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Enemies, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Hawke in Skyhold, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Party Banter, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 18:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18016055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamuan/pseuds/anamuan
Summary: Varric is Hawke's kind of person, so she isn't being biased when she says the worst thing about him is that hewon't stop talking. He's constantly making up misadventures for her out of whole cloth and spreading them around to what seems like half the population of Kirkwall. Hightown or Darktown, no matter what, Hawke has no idea what anyone's heard or whether or not it's going to cause her trouble later.Well, that isn't entirely true. It almost always means trouble later.So: Four Stories about Hawke that Are Absolutely True, and One that Definitely Isn't.





	Taller Tales than Most

**Author's Note:**

> Eternal gratitude to [ubertastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ubertastic/pseuds/ubertastic) for the excellent beta. All extant mistakes are my own.

Tied to a chair in a ratty little hole somewhere under....probably the Chantry district, but maybe not. Hawke had gotten a little turned around after the ninth right, what with the sack over her head. She hopes they'll remove it soon; it smells worse than Darktown does after it rains and all the filth in the upper echelons of the city does what shit does best and rolled downhill.

Bethany always says that taking a shortcut through the docks at night was more likely to shorten your life than your travel time. Woe betide anyone who tries to jump _her_ , Hawke always responded, but she has to admit that she probably wouldn't be in this predicament if she'd gone the long way 'round.

There is one upside to getting jumped by rank amateurs because you weren't paying attention to your surroundings: they don't know what they're doing. Put another way: she was really not tied very securely at all, they hadn't searched her for additional weapons, and big-and-lazy had talked small-and-stupid out of clubbing her on the head because he didn't want to carry her the whole way like a sack of potatoes. She'd clenched her fists when they'd tied her wrists, so now it's really just a question of whether she should risk getting the sharp little throwing blade she keeps up her shirtsleeves out when she isn't sure if there is anyone else in the room, or if she'll have to dislocate her thumb to get free. Hawke hates having to use the thumb trick. It makes holding a dagger difficult, even after she's popped it back into place.

"I'll watch 'er while you go and get the boss," Big-and-lazy ordered.

"What should I tell 'em?"

"That we caught a spy sneakin' around, like 'e said. We brought 'er back for 'im to question."

A door opens and closes; the wind of its passage blows more foul air against Hawke's face. She's going to take a long bath when this is over, even if she has to take it in the Waking Sea.

"Useless lout," Big-and-lazy mutters to himself, still by the door. Not even a whisper from anywhere else around her. Perfect, they're alone. Knife it is. Hawke twists her wrist until the sheath is aligned with the release catch. It's hard to get the right angle with the ropes in the way, and Hawke takes care to get it right. It would hardly do to to release the spring that usually drops the knife neatly into palm and fumble the catch. As if this situation weren't already embarrassing enough.

She makes a show of shifting her knees, testing the strength of the knots around her ankles, to distract the guard from what her hands might be doing behind her back. The ropes 'round her wrists are thick, and while her blade is sharp, it's intended for, well, murder, more or less, not sawing back and forth until coarse fibers frayed and parted.

"Quit struggling. Boss'll be 'ere soon enough," Big-and-lazy says. Hawke hears him take a step in her direction and stills herself. Her grip on the dagger's handle is firm, and she twists the blade so that the flat lies against her skin. She's unlikely to drop it even if he cuffs her, but best not to take any injuries before she's free of her bonds.

Another step; Hawke swings her head in his direction, even though the sacking prevents her from seeing him coming. Another step, but perhaps not towards her this time. Her shoulders tighten instinctively, and she has to will them loose again. He settles against something, cloth rustling—he sits, perhaps? There's a torch by the door, but not the side he'd been on, so she can't use the shadow to place him. Wood scrapes against dirt—yes, a chair leg—and still in front of her.

Luck holding, she gets back to work on the rope. The first strands fall to her blade and Hawke eases her grip. She has to be careful not to press too hard too quickly and risk cutting herself should the rest snap sooner than she expects. She can feel it getting close as the tension holding her wrists in place gives against her straining and pulls the blade away entirely. She doesn't think she can catch the loose strands before they fall, and she doesn't think she's far enough away from Big-and-lazy to get herself out of his reach if he notices what she's up to before she's ready.

The door bangs open, and the muggy, rotting scent of Darktown wafts in on the wake of, presumably, 'the boss.' Big-and-lazy scrambles to his feet.

"What is this? You told me you had the spy, not some inept thief."

"Sir, we found 'er sneakin' round the dockside entrance, you said—" Hawke twists the knife blade and the rest of the rope around her wrists parts and falls.

"Kill the thief. Dump her body somewhe—"

"Smuggler."

"What?" Hawke can't see anyone turn to look at her, but she's pretty sure they all did. She holds her hands very still behind her back, and hopes they don't notice the tangle of rope on the floor.

"I don't steal; I smuggle. Mostly items not otherwise on the market," she can't help the bit of pride from creeping into her voice, but she is generally _very_ good at what she does. Current capture notwithstanding. This one only counts if it kills her. These people, whoever they are, are _not_ the city guard. Aveline will probably get her out of trouble for anything that isn't _too_ egregious as long as she makes amends, but Hawke doesn't want to have to experience her Disappointed Face again if she can help it.

There's a moment of frosty silence, and then the shadow in front of the torch flickers, and 'the boss' addresses his minions again. "Kill her, dump the body somewhere that won't draw any unwanted attention to the operation, and get back to your post."

Hawke suppresses a sigh. She really hadn't wanted to have to fight her way out of this. At the very least, she'd hoped to have her legs free before anyone tried to kill her. Well, needs must. She switches the dagger to her left hand, and pulls the sack off her head with her free hand. It feels as disgusting as it smelt; she drops it quickly.

She brings her forefinger and thumb to her mouth and blows out as hard as she can in a sharp, shrill whistle, and then drops her arm to her side. She triggers the switch to drop another knife into her waiting palm, and just as quickly sends it darting towards Little-and-stupid's throat.

He ducks just enough for it to embed itself in his mouth through the cheek, and he makes the mistake of screaming, which tears the blade through his flesh. He drops to his knees, clutching at the dripping hole, and Hawke throws another knife.

This time her aim is off and it only scores along the side of Boss's sleeve. It leaves a bloody streak behind it, but the damage is superficial at best. He falls back towards the door, leaving Hawke with Big-and-lazy who—great—has a sword, but as soon as Boss realizes he's not really hurt, Hawke will be in _real_ trouble.

It would have been nice if they'd casually left the daggers they'd taken from the sheaths on her back on the table next to her, but that clearly would have been too easy. She drops another tiny throwing knife into her hand and thinks frantically about the best way to make it count. One in each hand, and one last in her wrist sheath, and not a one as good as a mosquito against Big-and-lazy's patchy chainmail unless he's a lot closer than she wants him. Thing about a sword is that it's got a very long reach.

No point messing with the ropes round her ankles; she'd never get through them before Big-and-lazy got to her. The only thing keeping him back is what he'd seen her do to Small-and-stupid, who has crawled towards the wall by the door, but is still pawing at his ruined face.

"What are you doing, stop wasting time and kill her," orders Boss from the back row; dutifully, Big-and-lazy takes a wary step forward. Hawke pulls her hand back and pictures where his left eye will be if he takes the three steps forward he'd need to have her within reach. There's not a lot of room to swing that sword around; he doesn't have a lot of choice about approach.

Hawke takes a breath and four things happen in quick succession: Big-and-lazy starts his charge; Hawke throws the knife in her right hand; it misses, but makes him duck; and a big Mabari appears as if summoned and leaps straight onto the middle of Big-and-lazy's back.

He goes down with a shout and a flail of limbs while the dog's heavy jaws close around the back of his neck. Hawke uses the opportunity to tip the table forward onto its side and, not seeing any other options, rocks herself and chair hard over behind it. She'll have bruises all down her left side, but she's got cover, and now that the chair isn't trapped by her weight to the floor, all she has to do is slide the rope off the bottom of the legs.

She works herself free and rolls to her feet just as the mabari's thrashing head snaps Big-and-lazy's spine. The dog twists around in the narrow space as though it were a meadow, displaying all the grace that Big-and-lazy hadn't. With the mabari facing him, Small-and-stupid makes a terrified noise and scrabbles backwards against the wall towards the door. Boss is still standing in the doorway and Hawke has just enough time to wonder if he's too scared to move before he pulls a heavy-ended staff in through the gap.

"Curse you," Boss spits, as Hawke drops the last dagger from the sheath into her hand. Then he clubs Small-and-stupid on the back of his head and three shades burst from the earth where the blood spatter falls.

"Andraste's flaming tits."

~*~*~

Hawke isn't saying this to be mean, but she hates Varric's Maker-forsaken stories. Don't get her wrong: Varric has a lot of positive qualities, and he is, hands down, Hawke's favourite dwarf. He's got a silver tongue and a ready purse. He's got more connections than a Coterie boss and he's got a few soft spots underneath his wicked sense of humour. His aim isn't bad on the whole, and he's only probably lying to you at any given moment in time.

Varric has only tried to sell her out to a demon once and never tried to sell her out to anything that could be classified as actually alive, and he's taken every weird thing Hawke's ever thrown at him in stride. Family history of apostacy? There are worse things. For example, a family history of involvement with the dwarven Merchant's Guild. Now _that_ Varric would not recommend to anybody. Need to take a little field trip to visit a less-than-friendly Dalish clan camping outside the city limits? As long as they're the only Dalish clan they need to visit tomorrow; Varric doesn't want this to turn into _camping_. He's a city boy at heart. Camping is for wandering minstrels.

Even when Varric isn't particularly pleased about a situation, he's usually alright with going along and seeing what happens. Like that time he talks them out of trouble with some trigger-happy Templars in that cave full of dead blood mages on the Wounded Coast. When even Varric can't talk their way out of a mess, Hawke is always happy for Bianca to have her back during a fight. Like that time with the giant spiders (or that other time with the giant spiders. Or that other time with the, yes, giant spiders) or that time with Fenris's least favourite slavers in that dwarven ruin outside of town. Varric isn't bad in a fight, and is quick on his feet and with his crossbow. Plenty of positive traits.

Varric is Hawke's kind of person. So she isn't being biased when she says the worst thing about Varric is the way he _won't stop talking_. He's constantly making up misadventures for her out of whole cloth and spreading them around to what seems like half the population of Kirkwall. Then the next time she walks into the Hanged Man, a stranger at another table will catch her eyes and raise a glass. Or the next time she walks into a Hightown fete with her mother, a noble she's never met will tell her they've heard _so_ much about her. Hightown or Darktown, no matter what, Hawke has no idea what in Andraste's name it's for and whether or not it's going to cause her trouble later.

Well, that isn't entirely true. It almost always means trouble later.

~*~*~

"What's it this time, Hawke? Slavers? Apostates? Tal-Vashoth? That one was nasty; don't fancy a repeat."

"Better! Or worse, I suppose. It depends on your perspective," Isabela breaks off, musing.

" _Rivaini_ knows, and you haven't told me? Oh, I am _not_ going to like this, am I?"

"Don't give me that tone of voice, Varric, this excursion is Aveline-approved."

Varric rolls his eyes heavenward. "Since I don't see Aveline here, that's somewhat less reassuring than you might have intended it to be. Tell me we're at least bringing Blondie."

Hawke flicks a knife out of its quick-release wrist sheath, flips it into the air, catches it in the same hand, and stows it away again almost as smoothly. "We're bringing Anders; as charming a group as we are, I'd rather not wander around the Wounded Coast without a healer."

*

The narrow, twisting paths of the Wounded Coast around Kirkwall _are_ mapped, mostly, except the maps are all, to the last leaf, wrong. Hawke is pretty sure it's not entirely deliberate. Surely a dozen of those maps were intended to be accurate, or were accurate once. The Wounded Coast just changes. A tree falls, making a well-travelled path impassable. The coast crumbles out from underneath another, falling piece by piece into the sea—hopefully without anyone currently atop it.

People find another way, enlarging a deer track into something a cart can travel. Hauling the fallen tree away and using it to make a bridge. Clearing the giant spiders out of a nearby cave so the way is safe instead of, well, full of giant spiders. It's the way of people, like the way of the Wounded Coast is to spit up the remains of seafaring vessels all along the shoreline. It's not always the way of people to go home afterward and make sure they've notified the Viscount to update the maps.

And then there are the dozens and dozens of unmarked hideaways, hidden paths, secret passages, boltholes, stashes, caches, and covert dens that are purposefully omitted from the official record by those who make use of them. Hawke also discounts anything dug or cleared out by darkspawn trying to find their way to the surface or to an Old God, because no one wants to go _there_ on purpose except Grey Wardens. Hawke shies away from that train of thought almost as soon as she realizes she'd gotten there. Grey Wardens are....touchy, just at the moment.

Given the lay of the land, the hardest part of the request Aveline had made of her should be finding the purported pirate stronghold. Hawke brings Isabela for pirate reasons, Anders for healing and the occasional firestorm, and Varric for back-up. They have a better idea of where to start than they usually do, because a pair of Aveline's guards had discovered a trap in what had previously been a well-patrolled area. Unfortunately for the guards, they'd discovered it with their feet. Even with steel plate, their convalescence in the barracks was predicted to take weeks.

Hawke spreads her party out, and they take their time. She's seen Anders practically bring a person back from the dead, but she can't afford the boots supplied to the City Guard and she's never seen Anders grow someone a new foot.

Varric hears the last screw fall out of his 6th trap and sits back on his heels. "This isn't exactly what I thought we'd be doing when you said 'take down a pirate stronghold'," he says, wiping the sweat from his brow. Hawke grins at him and uses the somewhat less delicate 'dropping a big branch on the trigger' method to disarm the one she's been sizing up. The serrated teeth of the steel trap snap shut like a mouth. The branch cracks, and the smaller half is catapulted a few feet into the air before falling back to earth.

"What, did you think we'd just charge right in the front entrance?" she asks, grinning, and then a jar full of bees falls out of a nearby tree, and Hawke finds herself falling through what she _thought_ was a bit of cliff face onto a previously hidden path as she jumps back in surprise.

"Fuck!" shouts Isabela, and then she and the rest of the party come charging in behind Hawke, dragging her to her feet, and they all run headlong until the bees lose interest and stop chasing them.

"I think we're out of range," Hawke pants at last, flopping down onto the ground to catch her breath.

"Great job on that last one," Anders says, gasping and leaning heavily on his staff as though it were a simple walking aid.

Isabela shrugs, unfazed by his sarcasm. "I slipped," she says. "I could either catch the jar or catch the tree."

Hawke lets herself fall flat on the path, even though it will mean scrubbing sand out of her hair later. Sweat trickles down her neck and keeps her swatting at imaginary bees, conjured by fear. She going to charge the City of Kirkwall extra for this. Pirates are one thing; bees are altogether another.

"Hey, Hawke," Varric says from somewhere above her. "What did you say the pirate stronghold looked like?"

"I didn't say," she says slowly, sitting up. She regrets lying down now, since sand is stuck to every sweaty part of her skin that had touched the road, namely, all of it. "Aveline didn't have a description."

"Well, I think we might have found it." Varric pulls a branch aside and gestures grandly towards the opening in the brush. Through it, Hawke can see three long boats pulled up above the tide line and behind them, on a little bend of beach, some upright, sharpened logs forming a wall and gate. A black and white flag snaps in the sea breeze over the gate. "That look like pirates to you?"

Hawke ineffectually brushes sand off her arms, and climbs to her feet. "No rest for the wicked," she says.

Isabela checks the twin blades she carries on each hip for sand or damage, and then, satisfied, looks up smirking. "Them or us?"

*

Hawke talks her way in because she's hot and tired, and there's definitely sand inside her shirt, and because she _can_. She's pretty sure she can also talk her way into a drink before they'll have to do any killing, which suits her. Isabela approves; Anders dislikes the idea immensely; and Varric gets that look in his eye that means he can't wait to see what's going to happen next.

"Where'd you get the mage?" One of the pirates asks, sliding Hawke that drink across the plank of a makeshift table propped over a couple of crates.

"Hmm? Oh, him? We rented him from the Circle. They have very affordable rates in Kirkwall." Hawke makes sure to pitch her voice low enough that neither Anders nor Justice will overhear her. Justice never knows how to take a joke, and Anders increasingly less so the longer Justice shares his head.

For his part, the pirate seems to take her at her word, which is to the good. The fewer people know Anders is an apostate, the better. "Any rules about what they do?" he enquires, clearly thinking about all the _possibilities_ having a mage around would open up for an ambitious pirate.

"You know, the usual," Hawke continues, trying to speak more and more quietly as Anders starts walking back her way without her ad hoc companion noticing anything amiss, "You're held personally liable upon pain of death if they escape from your custody, no blood magic, etc., etc. Oh, yeah, and the overnight rates cost an arm and a leg. It's hassle going to the Gallows to return and pick up a mage every day, but it's by far the more economical opt—"

Isabella and Varric save her from the hole Hawke had been digging for herself with her mouth when the 'office' they'd disappeared into to discuss so-called business with the pirate captain exploded into wooden shrapnel. Hawke manages drop behind the table crates fast enough to avoid any serious injury; her conversation partner was less fortunate.

"Looks like things are getting bloody!" Anders shouts, last of the flying splinters disintegrating against his mage-shield. Smoke belches from the debris, filling up the rest of the space, and making it hard to figure out where everyone is and what they're doing.

Hawke hauls herself back to her feet and pulls her daggers free. "Do you think that was us disagreeing with them, or them disagreeing with us?" she asks him. A familiar rain of arrows begins to fall around them, and Isabela drops into sight as if by magic beside her.

"It was us disagreeing with them," Isabela answers, and then sights one of the pirate lieutenants through the smoke. She steps forward, issuing a ringing challenge.

"We were offering such good terms, too," Hawke says more to herself than anyone else. Somewhere to her left, Varric curses, and then an arrow pings past her through the smoke. A pirate backs cautiously out of the smoke from Varric's direction, cutlass wet with red; Hawke stabs her in the back. She falls and doesn't move again. Hawke dashes forward until she can guard Varric's back. He's bleeding sluggishly from a wound on the shoulder, but it doesn't look like he's too bad. "You good, Varric?"

"I set 'em up, you knock 'em down," he says, reloading Bianca. "Where'd Blondie go?" There's a double flash, like indoor lightning to their right. Something like the smell of ozone and charred meat fills the air.

Hawke points with her chin. "Think he's over there. Let's finish this."

"Lead the way. I could do this in my sleep."

*

"There's something I need to talk to you about, Hawke. " Anders says, as soon as Hawke walks in her front door.

"I don't think I like the sound of this," Hawke says, smile belying her words.

"There are rumours in the Darktown markets that Kirkwall _rents out_ its mages to the highest bidder, often for very hazardous work, and the mages receive _nothing_ as compensation for their labour. As though imprisonment weren't enough, this is tantamount to slavery! Mages are stripped of their freedom, and the Chantry profits!"

Well, fuck. She'd thought that pirate had died.

~*~*~

The Chantry board in Kirkwall gets more use as gallery space for the finest free selection of Kirkwall's anatomical artists than it does as a board advertising paid work, but this time when Hawke passes by to see if 'Captain Willy'—a pseudonym, she hopes—has submitted any new creations for the public eye, she finds a posting by a Chantry sister, asking to be met under the stairs by the Chantry garden for details and rates.

" _Under_ the stairs?" Varric asks, incredulity colouring his warm voice.

"That's what it says."

"That seem suspicious to you?" he says, more statement than question. Merrill crowds close to read the note over Hawke's shoulder, then darts around the board to reach the Chantry stairs in front of them.

"Oh, incredibly," Hawke agrees, tearing the posting free and tucking it away into a front pocket.

"So when are we going to meet her?"

"Immediately, I think. We're right here. Why make a second trip?"

"You don't want to make a detour and pick up a certain Captain of the Guard?"

"We're just going to _talk_ to her. If there's a situation you and I can't talk our way out of together, we'll be in _real_ trouble," Hawke laughs. She keeps one eye on Merrill, who seems to have gotten distracted by something just out of sight on one of the Chantry's balustrades. When Merrill ducks to examine it more closely, Hawke can just see the top of her head over the stonework.

"Exactly. The kind of trouble it would be nice to have Aveline around to handle, that's what I'm saying."

"Should I be offended that you do not seem to think my skills will be sufficient, should the need arise?" Fenris cuts in, clenching an armoured fist that still glows slightly blue, even in the bright courtyard.

"It's not about being able to hit people with a sharp stick, Broody. It's the part where no one tries to arrest me later."

Merrill finishes her examination of whatever it is, and flits back towards the big Chantry doors. Hawke starts up the stairs after her before she can duck out of sight. "Come on, you two," Hawke calls over her shoulder. "Merrill saw the word 'garden' and took off. If you take any longer, we're going to lose her entirely."

*

It turns out the Chantry sisters keep all the gardening supplies under this particular set of stairs. Sister Evelyn is in charge of keeping those supplies in order, not a zealot in the mold of Petrice, looking for cover to stir up trouble, or some kind of murderess hiding behind Andraste's mantle to lure victims to her murder stairs. Probably anyway. The day is still young.

"Why don't you tell me more about what's going on?" Hawke suggests, trying not to wince when Merrill almost knocks over a tower of carefully stacked boxes. She bumps into a row of hoes and rakes, hanging from a rack on the wall, but it's well-made, and does nothing more than rattle the gardening tools in their hanging cradles.

"I believe there are people going missing in Darktown," says Sister Evelyn gravely.

Varric, turned carefully so that the Sister can't see his face, gives Hawke a look that says _do you want to tell her, or should I?_ nearly as clearly as if he'd said it aloud. Hawke bites her tongue long enough to stave off a sarcastic remark and nods thoughtfully instead.

Taking it as permission, the Sister goes on. "I buy waste. I've got a group of regular sellers, Darktown orphans mostly, though they've been doing it long enough half of them are grown now. They bring it to me by the bucket, and it goes into the garden beds as fertilizer. Three are missing who have never missed a delivery. Another two may be missing as well, but they were never reliable. It's the first three that worry me. Even when Nolahra was ill winter last, she had her cousin make deliveries in her stead. It's been a week and a half, and I've seen neither hide nor hair of Nolahra or her cousin, and it's been at least as long since Hatto or Ferel have come either. If some of the others stopped coming, I'd have assumed they'd found other work, but those three, all that the same time, and a couple other besides? It bodes ill."

She hands Hawke a few scraps of paper, folded together. "Names and descriptions of everyone who usually sells to me. I know very little else about them, I'm sorry to say. Darktown is a hard life. You learn to keep your secrets close, or you don't live very long."

Hawke takes the proffered scraps. "I'll see what I can do."

"One last thing," says the Sister. "Ferel had just started bringing me buckets of stuff that was more fish and birds than people, if you know what I mean." Hawke stares at her blankly. Sister Evelyn sighs in exasperation. "I mean, she probably found a cave or something under the city that leads out near the sea."

"Oh, right. Of course."

*

Hawke tips herself back in one of Varric's heavy stone chairs and waits. Varric will break. He's got a soft spot for her.

"Aww, come on, Hawke," Varric cajoles. Implores, even. "When _don't_ I want to go searching through every midden heap under the city with you? But I really can't tonight, I've got a thing."

"A thing you mysteriously forgot about until just now?"

"No, a thing that I was forcefully reminded of by a pair of poison-dagger wielding Carta members when I got back to the Hanged Man."

Hawke winces, setting the chair back on four legs as she sits up. "No one is trying to kidnap you again, right?"

"Not if I show up on my own," says Varric.

"Yes, but will they let you _leave_ afterward as well?"

He grins crookedly. "The deal won't do them much good if I'm not here to find all the esoteric merchandise they're looking for."

"Yeah, yeah. You're missing out," Hawke says, mollified. "Just _think_ of all the shitholes we'll discover without you."

"Full of Kirkwall's finest, no doubt."

"Hardly. _They're_ already here in the Hanged Man."

*

They start in Darktown, but don't stay there. The trail leads down, of course. Soon they're following semi-abandoned tunnels _under_ Darktown into other tunnels that make Darktown's mold-choked closeness seem refreshing by comparison.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" Anders asks, unhappy to be dragged any deeper below the surface than his clinic. Twenty minutes of nothing but tunnels was wearing on him.

"The merchant said the third tunnel on the right. I think I've already killed anyone in this town stupid enough to try to lure the Champion of Kirkwall into an alley for nefarious purposes, but they're welcome to give it a try if they like." Hawke grins under her battle paint, and dances a small stone across the backs of her knuckles like a coin. 

Suddenly, her torch sputters and goes out, throwing them all into utter darkness.

"Ouch," says Merrill, a bit to Hawke's left. There was nothing but cave wall that way.

"Anyone got a match?" Hawke asks. There's a long, self-conscious silence. "Merrill? The spare torch?"

"Um," starts Merrill. "I might have dropped it?"

"Right," says Hawke. "Anders?"

"A fireball might be a bad idea," he says, somewhere behind her.

"No one's asking for a fireball. I was thinking more candle flame."

"I never got very good at small, controlled fires." he reminds her. "I'm really more of a healer." Even in the dark, he sounds sullen.

"Right," says Hawke. It's going to be a long walk in the dark back to the surface. At least they hadn't run into anything that wanted to kill them on the way down. Hawke is confident that her band can dispatch any roaming dangers under the City of Chains, but she'd rather do it while she can see what they are.

Before she can turn, Fenris's lyrium tattoos flare to life ahead of her. Hawke grins at him. "Thanks for the light." He growls, and turns away, but he keeps the power coursing under his skin until Hawke fishes the missing torch out of the muck on the ground and gets the now-damp fibers to catch. It takes Hawke longer than she'd have liked, but nothing takes advantage of the relative darkness to come at them.

Of course, this means that when the tunnel finally widens into something of a chamber, a group of six skeletons rise shakily from the ground and attack them. Four have swords. Three charge Fenris, whatever animating them recognizing the threat of his lyrium ghost; but the fourth runs straight at Anders. Hawke slips into stealth and appears at his side in time to slash it with both daggers. Lacking flesh, the cuts do very little in way of damage to the skeleton, but the surprise attack slows its advance.

"Might be a good time for a fireball now," she says, unable to help herself. She catches the skeleton's downswing on her crossed daggers, and barely manages to disengage in time to duck an arrow let off by one of the skeleton archers in the back. Merrill throws a rock almost as big as she is at it, but the skeleton just shakes it off. That's the problem with undead enemies: nothing between their ears to rattle around and confuse them.

"You know, I wish you'd brought that mutt of yours. We could use another solid mass that likes to throw itself straight into the enemy line."

"Are you kidding? I'm not going to bring a Mabari down here to roll around in whatever _this_ filth is!" Hawke gestures to the pile of muck Anders is standing in to illustrate her point.

"Ugh!" Anders' fireball is really more of a firestorm this time, if she's being honest. A midden pile near the second archer catches fire and then Fenris knocks one of the warriors straight into it. Flames shoot up between its bones and it doesn't rise again.

"Ok, enough," Hawke says, dropping a smoke bomb and using the cover to flip behind the skeleton in front of her. She stabs it in the back with all her strength; vertebrae shatter with the impact, her blades shearing straight through to the front of the pelvic bone. The skeleton seems to disintegrate mid-air, and falls to the ground in pieces. Hawke looks around for her next target, but they've all been dispatched, bones scattered across the cavern too broken to cause future harm.

*

"Fenris, _wait_ , don't put your foot there!" Hawke shouts, hand outstretched as if to physically stop him.

Fenris, for his part, freezes, one foot still in the air. "Trap?"

She wrinkles her nose in disgust. "No, but that's _definitely_ shit," she says gesturing to the space under Fenris's descending foot.

Hawke swears he rolls his eyes, but Fenris puts his foot down just over the pile. "After everything else we've waded through today, _this_ is what will give you pause?"

"Next time you want me to just let you go?"

"....No, I'd prefer the warning."

Merrill nods sagely. "It sort of squishes unpleasantly between the toes," she says.

*

"Are you _sure_ we're going the right way?"

Hawke's boot slides through something _particularly_ nasty, and then thunks against something that sounds almost hollow. The putrid stench of rotting fish is so overwhelming that it takes Hawke a few moments to realize what it is she's stuck her foot in this time: a bucket, half full of the chantry's best fertilizer.

Merrill actually backs away holding her nose. "By the Dread Wolf! I thought I'd never smell anything again," she says, "but I was wrong. I can smell that very well."

"It seems we're nearly there." Hawke tries to hold her breath while responding, but denied her nose, the stench seems to pool and linger on her tongue. "Let's keep moving."

A few twists of the tunnel later, a distance of barely 50 feet, and Fenris raises a fist in warning. Voices. 

They all creep more carefully towards the next bend in the rock and try to see what's on the other side without being seen themselves.

There is a little inlet of water, dark as pitch, and it seems to glisten ominously in the light from the campfire a short ways away. There are people around the fire, three or four moving around, and two smaller, hunched figures that Hawke realizes are shackled wrists and ankles when one tries to cringe away from one of the others and the dark band at their wrist catches the light like the water does. 

"Slavers?" Hawke murmurs, then looks more closely. Several mages' staves lean against a crate, and atop it, a long, wicked dagger, obsidian blade gleaming like fresh blood. "Blood mages. Why is it _always_ blood mages, lately? Does anyone else miss the kinds of gangs that are just trying to kill you for your purse? I can't be the only one." 

Fenris starts to open his mouth, but Hawke can tell it's not going to be to reminisce about desperate Ferelden refugees turned mugger. "I don't want to hear it," she warns him. Anders takes that as permission to opine about the mage's plight, so Hawke hurriedly raises her other hand. "Nothing from you either. Neither of you," she says, including Justice in the admonition. "You don't even _like_ blood mages."

"Why have they got those children _chained down_?" Merrill asks, aghast. Fenris and Anders both start to speak again, but Hawke cuts them off.

"No, don't. Just don't," she says. She sighs a deep sigh, and then immediately regrets having inhaled so much of the putrid air. "Look, let's just go save them, and then get out of here as fast as we can, ok? Ok."

*

Four blood mages is an unbalanced party. Even with the shades they call from the Fade and the undead they pull from the earth, they're not much of a match for Fenris's lyrium ghost and Hawke's pinpoint strikes. The fight is fast and clean and Hawke's band takes them down almost by rote.

There is one harrowing moment when three of the four mages have been dispatched. One of the chained girls grabs her head and screams, shaking violently. When she stills just as suddenly, she takes the chain linking her wrists between her hands and twists it around the other captive's neck, and everything looks like it's going to get _very_ messy. The other girl grabs the tightening chains in a bid to keep them from crushing her windpipe, and the struggle sends them both over in the dirt.

Merrill gets that strained look that means she's about to start slicing herself open, while Fenris gets a look on his face that means he's considering just ripping out the thrall's heart. That's a sub-optimal solution, as far as Hawke's concerned, because they didn't walk all the way down here just to kill the missing teens themselves. Plus she can't guarantee that, with blood magic involved, losing a vital organ would actually slow the mind-controlled victim down. Most blood mages prefer controlling corpses to living people: no will to fight against theirs.

A quick blade to the throat should solve all their problems nicely, but the last mage is taking no chances. Her barrier spell is so strong Fenris's last attack literally bounced off and sent him sprawling.

"Merrill, do something to keep those two apart, or at least, not killing each other. Fenris, she's all yours," Hawke gestures to the blood mage and then uses the distraction of Fenris's charge to slip out of sight. A mage can't keep up a barrier forever; doubly so when trying to simultaneously control an unwilling thrall. It isn't hard to get close to her. Then all Hawke has to do is wait until the shield comes down and slide a knife between her ribs, easy as breathing.

*

It turns out to be much harder to get the two rescued teens out of their chains than it was to take down their last captor. Merrill had sort of _grown_ the ground up through links in the chains like stone tree roots. It was a very effective way to immobilize them without either of them taking significant further harm, yes, plus extra points for creativity.

The problem is that it took an incredible amount of magic and control, and Merrill finished the job and more or less passed straight out. Even after Anders has patched up the deep gashes she'd opened across her palm and they've forced their last lyrium potion down her throat, she isn't good for much besides walking back out mostly under her own power.

"Fenris, do you think you...?" Hawke starts to ask, gesturing to the captive prisoners.

He snorts a harsh laugh. "Do you just want them out, or do you want them out alive?" he asks back. One of the girls starts to cry, which she hadn't done even when her cousin was trying to choke her to death.

"Maker take me," swears Hawke.

*

In the end, they hack them out using an old ax they'd found in a chest on the way down.

Sister Evelyn pays them for their trouble in fresh produce.

~*~*~

"That...should....do it," Hawke says through clenched teeth as she delicately, delicately uses a slender hook to ease the spring forward into place without jostling the pins she was still holding back with another pick. It springs open into the hole she'd carefully aligned it against, and she pulls both instruments out of the way as fast as she can so the bolt can slide open without any stray pieces of metal interfering. The master lock clicks open and Hawke grins, triumphant.

That's when the evil laughter starts—because of course it does.

The chest begins to shake, gaining speed as the laughter gets louder, and Hawke has just enough time to stumble away from it before the lid bursts off the top and a pride demon sort of _expands_ into a towering monstrosity above it.

<< _**You show promise,**_ >> it says in a kind of rumbling at the base of Hawke's skull that's more felt than heard. It feels like the onset of a migraine. << **_I could give you more than mere promise. I could give you true mastery._** >>

"And here we go again," Hawke mutters. "I think I'll be fine without your assistance," she calls up to the demon.

It throws its horned head back and laughs. Hawke winces, trying to shake the sound out of her skull. << **_You think you can survive an encounter with me? Hubris! I offered you much, but you choose to die._** >> That's when Aveline throws herself bodily at it, blade first. Her sword slides off its scaled hide with a small shower of sparks; Hawke doesn't think Aveline even scratched it.

A tangle of phantom vines covered in wicked thorns burst from the ground around Merrill. They twine their way across the battlefield with unnerving speed to twist themselves around the demon's legs, trying to drag it towards the mage. They don't move the pride demon much, but the thorns seem able to pierce it's scaled armour, and the thicker vines slow it down, making it more susceptible to Aveline's physical attacks.

Hawke uses the confusion to release a sharp, shrill whistle into the air, calling her dog back from whatever corner he'd gone to explore. She paints the demon with a mark of death, and then slips into stealth. No one would call Hawke the type to run from her troubles; she much prefers to come up behind them and stab them in the back. Demons are no exception.

<< _**Finally, I am freed.**_ >> the demon rumbles, throwing its arms wide. It sets the phantom vines wrapped around it to the waist alight with a phantom fire. It's significantly more effective on the things than regular fire. << _**Boast will not be so easily contained again!**_ >> The vines fall away in burning pieces and Merrill exclaims in frustration, then pain, as the fire follows the vines back to their roots around her feet.

Hawke changes course, scrambling towards Merrill in case she literally needs to be pulled from the flames, and reaches her just as she stumbles out of the ring of green fire. "You good?" Hawke asks, steadying Merrill on her feet. When Merrill nods, Hawke moves on, trying to flank the demon before it turns its attention back their way.

"Is that all you've got?" Isabela shouts across the field, one blade raised in challenge. Boast laughs raucously, vibration so deep that it nearly sends Hawke stumbling, and then a patch of dirt to her left starts to glow orange-red. It bubbles, molten ground humping up on itself, and then in a shower of sparks and red-hot rock, a rage demon erupts from the earth. Three shades slide out from under the shadow of its passing and all four start converging on Isabela.

"Maker's balls," Hawke swears under her breath, and throws a grenade into the middle of the pack of shades. It explodes into fire as the flask shatters against the ground. The shades take damage, but the rage demon, of course, does not. And now it's seen her. And it's mad.

Hawke darts around its grasping, molten arms and stabs both daggers as deeply as she can into its back. "Isabela, perhaps refrain from antagonizing these nice demons," she calls over her shoulder. Isabela just laughs a wild laugh and leaps towards the pride demon, blades dancing. Hawke twists her own blades, still embedded in the rage demon's gooey innards, and then barely manages to yank her daggers free before the rage demon melts into the earth at her feet. Blight take them, she hates when they do this. You never know where they're going to pop back up.

"Hawke, watch out!" It's Merrill. Hawke ducks away instinctively, protecting her head, and turns just in time to dodge the slick, black claws of the last surviving shade. She slashes at it, and then her dog drops out of the air onto its back, driving it into the ground with a sickening crunch. It melts into smokey nothingness and Sparrow barks happily, tail wagging, proud of himself.

"Good boy," Hawke tells him. He wags his tail a final time, and then leaps clear over her head to harry the pride demon from behind. The demon is pouring its pale green fire out to pool around its feet, keeping both Aveline and Sparrow circling at a distance, trying to find an opening.

Hawke paints Boast with another mark of death, and then notices the ground starting to bubble just behind Aveline, out of her line of sight. "Oh, no, you don't," she grits out, jumping back into the fray.

The rage demon pulls itself out of the ground, slag melting off it's back, but Hawke's ready for it by the time it's got its arms free. Her knives cut deep, and the demon collapses in on itself, melting back into the ground.

Hawke turns in time to see Merrill throw a rock that catches the pride demon in the face. Boast shakes the blow off, but with her mark shining above its head, Hawke can see its guard is down, and its extra armor with it. The demon isn't laughing now. It roars and swings one of its bladed forearms at Hawke. She dodges back out of the way, trying to find an opening to take advantage of before it collects itself and summons more armor.

It turns, slashing this time at the dog, who jumps clear. Boast pours more fire around its feet until the cold flames leap chest high and deadly. Isabela's sudden absence catches Hawke's attention, but the demon doesn't seem to notice.

A moment later, the pirate reappears, midair, almost as if by magic, behind the big creature. "You're mine," she crows, each of her blows striking home as she falls, just barely landing outside the flames. The demon stumbles, but catches itself before it falls, and Hawke's mark flickers out above it.

"You will fall!" Aveline says, and then she drops her shield face down into the pale flames, steps into the breach it makes in the ring, and drives her blade up into the demon's chest from below until she hits something vital and the demon blows away like ash on a wind only it can feel. The fire gutters out an instant later, leaving Aveline standing on her shield in a pond of nothing.

"Well," says Isabela, checking her blades for damage, and then stowing them away. "Let's see if there was anything good in that chest, y'know, under the demon."

Hawke's mabari barks his agreement.

~*~*~

"There goes another one, Hawke! How many have you got?" Varric crows from somewhere behind her. The slaver he was talking about goes down with an arrow through her eye—the kind of shot where it doesn't matter how good you are, some of that is luck.

"We should move on. Quietly," says Fenris.

"It's unusual for you to want to take the back way in, Broody. Usually you're all 'Let's charge straight through the front door—in your case literally."

"I do not want the slavers to hear us coming, panic, and kill their captives to dispose of the evidence. Sometimes a body is easier to hide than a frightened person is biddable."

" _I_ know that. I just didn't think _you_ did." Varric holds up his hands in surrender when Fenris gives him a look. "Ok, ok. I'm a rogue. Stealth mode it is."

They creep upwards through the cellars, but aside from the guards they'd cut through who had been posted at the back entrance, they encounter neither slavers nor their captives. They do pass a couple of _very_ nice Orlesian vintages gathering dust in a back rack that the slavers seem to have missed. One finds its way into Varric's pack when Aveline isn't looking.

They work through several small, disused storage rooms that twist along the breadth of the building like a string of paper dolls. The last two rooms are bigger, separated from each other by a heavy wooden door. In front of the door, 5 or 6 guards stand at nominal attention while their lieutenant leans back in a chair propped up against the wall, most of the way asleep.

Hawke motions for Aveline to hang back and watch Varric's back, while Fenris charges across the room, sword drawn and lyrium blazing. The guards scramble, panicked, and the lieutenant just starts to sit up when Hawke reaches him. She puts a dagger through his throat, and his chair goes back up on two legs and hits the wall with a thump, the weight of his body holding it there.

"What's going on?" someone cries, one eye peering out through the barred slot in the door. "Someone's killing the guards!" says the eye's owner, probably.

"Help!" someone else shouts from behind the door. Hawke ignores them.

The guards are disorganized without their lieutenant, and Fenris is a fox among chickens with his sword, slashing here, then striking there. Arrows pepper the field, boxing them in, and it's the work of only a few moments before they're all dead. Aveline never even got her sword wet.

"Did we get all of them?" Hawke asks her companions. There are worse places to hold off wave after wave of angry slavers, but Hawke would prefer to keep the element of surprise.

"Please, let us out!" probably the eyeball shouts.

"No one escaped," Aveline says.

"Hurry!" calls another voice from behind the door. "We don't know when they're coming back!"

Hawke searches the lieutenant's pockets and comes up with a key. "You don't even know who we are," she says, sauntering up to the door and looking Eyeball in the eye.

The bit of skin around the eyeball crinkles a little, maybe a smile, maybe a grimace. "You aren't them," she says. Smile then, probably.

"Stand back," Hawke says, sticking the key in the door. Eyeball disappears. And then the damn thing won't turn. It's not the right lock. She looks around the room, surveying the bodies of the slavers left where they'd fallen. "I guess we should have left one alive," she sighs, "so we could ask them where the key is."

*

The key they have fits a smaller door nearly opposite the makeshift cell, around behind a big cask of the same swill Corff stocks at the Hanged Man. It opens to reveal a narrow, plain staircase with well-worn floorboards. Hawke examines the staircase, but doesn't find anything dangerous, so she starts up it. They're not going to get anywhere by standing in the cellars.

They end up in the kitchens. Someone's made a campfire in the big fireplace dominating one wall instead of a proper kitchen's fire, and it's guttered out overnight. The kitchen's workstations are in similar disarray—no one who actually knows their way around a kitchen has been using this one. Further examination reveals two smallish larders and one room that probably used to be a still room when the house was in use as an estate, but now houses a few half-empty bottles of _something_ brackish and foul-smelling, and one desiccated bundle of lavender hanging from a hook in the low ceiling.

They're just about to move on to the rest of the house when the door to the kitchens slides open. A slaver sneaks through, all his attention focused in the hallway, and carefully, quietly, closes the door behind him.

Fenris has him by the throat before he even sees them.

The slaver scrabbles ineffectually at Fenris's hold, but he doesn't have the air to shout a warning to anyone else. He kicks out when Aveline comes forward to help hold him, but it's just wild flailing. He likely does more damage to himself than to Aveline's heavy plate.

"So," Varric drawls, thumbs hooked into his belt. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

*

The key is in a drawer in the boss's desk upstairs, room third on the left. The boss is "entertaining guests" in the garret, which Hawke takes to mean he's too busy fucking to notice them unless they're really obvious.

The slaver ends up bound and locked in the still room. They move the heavy kitchen table to barricade the door shut for good measure. It's not hard work between four of them, even if Varric's corner dips lower than the other three.

*

They kill another handful of guards playing dice in an anteroom off the front entrance. The shouting and the clash of arms brings another three guards in from the main hall, and then, as they're looting those bodies, it brings the boss, armor thrown hastily over his small clothes, and six more fully dressed guards to see what all the ruckus was about.

Aveline gives them a chance to surrender and be arrested, but the boss rallies his slavers into a charge instead, and it's daggers back out with a rain of arrows falling around them.

Fenris and Aveline give their own charge, and they crash into the front rank of slavers like the tide. Or maybe the other way around, blows breaking around the two of them like waves on the broken coastline outside the city limits. Arrows hiss through the melee: one of Varric's goes straight _through_ one of the slaver warriors' shoulder, armor and all, and keeps going long enough to glance off another's breastplate.

One of theirs grazes Fenris under the arm, whistling through the space between his sword and his body, where he doesn't wear armor. Maybe more than just a graze from the amount of blood spilling from the wound, but Fenris—caught up in righteous fury—doesn't even seem to feel it. Another arrow thuds into the ground at Aveline's feet, deep enough that if it had struck her, she'd be literally pinned to the spot. Time to deal with that problem.

It's barely a full thought, and Hawke's already edging around the main affair. She needs to get to the side, not all the way around the fight, just far enough over to have a clear line of sight to their back rank. A few more feet and she's there; she lobs her grenade straight into the row of enemy archers.

It shatters and bursts into flames as the liquid inside makes contact with the air. There's panic and screaming now, and billowing black smoke quickly fills the room, adding to the chaos and confusion. One of the flaming archers runs into the backs of his compatriots. One of them turns, sword out, caught in surprise and instinct, and cuts the burning archer down.

The other two manage to put themselves out, but they've scattered, no longer a neat row sending death through the air. One spots Hawke and starts shooting at her. The arrows are singed so they don't fly well; it gives Hawke enough time to break another flask of smoke and escape to the other side of the fight, where the archer will have a harder time hitting her.

She goes after the other archer, coming up behind her and sliding a knife into the gap in her armor at her armpit. The archer flails, instinct telling her to run or to fight, but her dying body fails to do either. She manages to thwack Hawke in the side with her bow once before she falls, then lies twitching in a spreading pool of blood.

Fenris and Aveline have the slaver boss pinned between them, only one fighter left at his side. _That_ kid is swinging his sword and shield around wildly, panic clearly etched onto his features. The only thing keeping him from just dropping his weapons and running is that he isn't sure how to get out of the thick of the fight.

"This isn't going so well!" Varric shouts; Hawke whips around, and sees him backing up across the hall, one warrior in way too close for him to get a decent shot, and the last archer lining him up in his sights. Hawke isn't even sure Varric knows about the archer, busy as he is trying to dodge the warrior's blade.

Hawke's can't take them both out, so she does the next best thing: she grabs a decorative vase off one of the manor's tables and throws it at the archer's head. It bounces off his shoulder and shatters magnificently against the ground, sharp shards of china exploding in all directions. Hawke, meanwhile, leaps towards Varric, blades dancing. All of her strikes glance off the warrior's armor, but he turns to face her instead, giving Varric a chance to get away.

Hawke ducks under the slaver's pommel strike, slashing at his side as she whirls past him. It slices through his mail, leaving a shallow jagged cut behind. He turns quickly, not giving Hawke enough time to put one of her daggers in his back, and strikes at her legs. She flips out of the way, but he's there when she comes down to earth, forcing her to dodge back again. Somewhere behind her, she hears Varric crow as he takes out the last archer. Perfect timing.

"Varric, a little help here!" she calls, dropping into a crouch with a high guard, and a trio of arrows fly around her, pinning the warrior in place. Two more arrows sail past her, one catching the slaver in the heart, the other punching home in the slaver's head.

*

Upstairs, third door on the left. The room holds a desk and a few chairs positioned around it. It looks like a normal office.

"What is it with creepy, semi-abandoned Hightown mansions operating as dens for slavers?" Hawke says, walking around to the other side. She starts with the big center drawer, but it's all papers thrown in haphazardly. She glances over the first few sheets, but they seem to be bad love poetry, so she dumps them all out on the top for Varric to go through and moves to the next drawer.

"Hmm, what's this?" Varric drags a sheet of paper out of the pile by the corner and holds it up to the light from the window.

Hawke glances up at him. "What's what?" The first draw on the left side is just a mess of broken quills and a polished bezoar charm. Hawke pockets the charm. She can probably sell it for something.

"Looks like official correspondence." He reads a little more, and his eyebrows shoot up. "Oh, Aveline is going to have a field day with this. They never learn: if it's illegal, _don't write it down_."

"What's it say?" Hawke tugs on the second drawer. It slides out half an inch and then sticks.

"It seems Lord Beran—"

"The Lord Beran Aveline had in for questioning two nights ago about what he knew of this property?" Hawke gets both hands on the handle and yanks, and almost drops the thing when it comes out of the desk entirely. A lyrium potion and hmm, not a bad dagger at all. She takes them both.

Varric nods. "Yes, who knew nothing, it's his cousin's property, _that_ Lord Beran is funding—and profiting—from this whole operation."

The key is in the third drawer down. It's not even locked. Hawke holds the key aloft, triumphant. "Some people never learn," she says. "Let's get back to Aveline."

*

"Bullshit," Cassandra declares, slamming her open palm against the top of the table. Cups and plates jump and clatter up and down the table's length like the skeptical murmurs of an Orlesian crowd. A couple of actual Orlesians sitting at the other end of the banquet table look up in alarm, and then hastily stand and hurry away when Cassandra stands up to loom over Varric more imposingly.

Varric leans back in his chair and spreads his hands out in front of him— _nothing to hide here_ —and smiles one of his most charming smiles. Cassandra's frown only deepens.

"It's all true," Varric says, with a quick, crooked glance at Hawke across the table. Hawke doubts Cassandra catches the significance, but _she_ can practically read Varric's mind as he recalculates his next sentence. "You can ask anybody." Hawke covers her mouth with a hand to hide the beginnings of a smile. Best not to ask Cassandra if he'd ever lie to her.

"At this juncture, it would be very difficult to verify any of the—" Cassandra stops short, seemingly realizing that the Champion herself is gracing them with her presence. Cassandra turns to Hawke. " _Is_ it true, Champion?" she asks.

Hawke furrows her brow and rubs her hand over her chin a few times, before bringing it down below the edge of the table. She stretches out one of her legs and kicks Varric gently in the shin.

"At this juncture, it's really very difficult to remember all the _details_ of my many adventures in Kirkwall, Seeker. I'm sure you understand that I can neither _confirm_ —" She throws Varric a significant look. Varric slips a crown into her palm under the table, rolling his eyes dramatically while Cassandra's attention is on Hawke. "—Nor deny _most_ of these stories."

Cassandra's frown, impressively, deepens even further. Hawke keeps a bland smile on her face until Varric slides another coin into her waiting hand.

Hawke smiles disarmingly. "I can however, substantiate the one about the Chantry Sister, even if Varric _did_ leave out the best part.” Hawke pauses just long enough for Cassandra’s eyes to dart towards Varric before Hawke recaptures her attention. “While I was rescuing Darktown orphans from the literal shithole under the City of Chains, there was a cabal of nobles trying to get me elected Viscount."

"Viscount!?" Cassandra exclaims, already drawn in. "But I heard nothing of this when I was investigating—" you, she doesn't say, "—the recent problems in Kirkwall."

Hawke winces internally. Kirkwall was three-fourths smoking crater _before_ the Rift; she usually makes an effort not to think about how the city might be doing now. She shakes herself out of that train of thought and motions for Cassandra to sit once more.

"It wasn't a serious suit," Hawke says, waving a hand dismissively. "Just some political blah-di-blah because some Orlesian _merchant_ came into a Marcher title—landed and everything—and wanted to know why there wasn't a new Viscount yet. Some of Kirkwall's less prestigious noble families felt this line of questioning was an obvious attempt to recommend themselves for the position, which was just as obviously intolerable."

Hawke settles into her seat more comfortably, taking the opportunity to pocket her new-found wealth as she does so.

"They found the munificence to overlook my distasteful 'wet dog smell' long enough to remember that my own, dear mother had snubbed them at parties for _years_!" Hawke continues. "As such, I was practically a native-born Kirkwaller myself, with pedigree _much_ higher than some trumped-up, upstart of a merchant."

"What happened then?" Cassandra asks. "Why didn't you become Viscount?"

"Oh, Aveline put a stop to it nearly as soon as it started, thank the Maker. It never really got off the ground." Hawke points at Varric across the table. "But this one here doesn't like to tell _that_ part of the story because he wasn't paying enough attention and didn't hear about any of the scheme until weeks later." She leans closer to Cassandra. "It hurts his pride to think anything could go on in his beloved city that he didn't know about," she says conspiratorially, pitched at a volume perfect for everyone on their end of the table to be able to hear.

Varric just snorts.

*

"The Seeker's going to be pissed when she finds out you lied to her," Varric says later, as they stumble back towards the barracks. It's late enough—or early enough—that not many others roam Skyhold's halls. They keep their voices down anyway; Leliana has ears everywhere, and she gossips with Cassandra far too often to allow them to be complacent.

"I did not lie to her!" Hawke says, then promptly stumbles over an uneven cobblestone, and uses Varric's shoulder to keep from pitching face-first into a wall. Skyhold is a little disorienting at this level of inebriation: the company's right, but the stones are the wrong colour. "That obnoxious Marquis _did_ try to get me made Viscount."

Varric shifts the arm he's got slung around Hawke's waist to make it easier for them both to lean against the other as he turns them down the right-hand split in the hallway. "But I knew about it the whole time!" he protests. "I didn't stop it because it was hilarious!"

Hawke sniffs. "Say that again when _you've_ been made Viscount. You'll see how funny it is then." Hawke transfers most of her weight to the wall as Varric futzes with the lock on the door to his room. This, at least, is nothing like Kirkwall. The door to Varric's rooms in the Hanged Man was seldom even closed, much less locked. "Besides, "she says. "That second crown you gave me had been shaved. You're lucky I supported you at all. You didn't pay me enough to make you look good, too."

Varric opens his door with a flourish and waves Hawke in with an ostentatious half-bow. She saunters in and drapes herself across the sofa by the fireplace like a rangy cat.

Varric closes the door behind them. "You used that same crown to pay for our drinks tonight," he counters, and then stumbles over to tumble face-down into his bed. 

Hawke feigns innocent confusion, patting at her pockets and coming up empty. "Why, so I did!" she says.

"Hey, Hawke?"

"Yes, Varric?" She smiles sweetly.

Varric hits her in the face with a tossed pillow. "Go the fuck to sleep."

**Author's Note:**

> Would you believe I started writing this in March 2017? Because I swear it wasn't that long ago. I guess that's what happens when you expect a ficlet and end up with 11k


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